Scioly.org

Posted: **March 17th, 2021, 9:03 pm**

This year being a pandemic year, Science Olympiads tournament directors from all the states have put a lot of effort to host the events by doing events modifications for the online format. Huge kudos to the tournament directors who are keeping the competition going. The online format was a huge success that kept the same competitive spirit and enabled students to compete in many invitationals across the country which would not have been possible with in-person tournaments.

Most of the STEM competitions including Science Olympiad got cancelled last year due to pandemic, and because of that, most of the students missed their opportunity to participate in state/national level competitions. Some of these STEM competitions are considering top 3/top 5 students/teams for Nationals to compensate for last year’s missed opportunity. As this year, most of the competitions are held online, logistically it is easy to increase the number of qualifiers if the software is able to handle the scale.

The online format of Science Olympiad competitions is already tested for the scale. Also, Science Olympiad competitors missed the opportunity to participate in state/national level competitions last year due to the pandemic. Lastly, as there are only study events (with build events being trialed) at Nationals, the teams that are strong in build events are at disadvantage. Example, if a state winner is strong in build events, it would loose that advantage at Nationals. If the second/third place teams at state are strong in study events, and qualified for Nationals that would keep the competition dynamics the same.

For the above reasons, would you think qualifying top 3 teams from state tournament for Nationals can give an equal opportunity to all the teams and also compensate for missed opportunity from last year?

Posted: **March 24th, 2021, 10:04 am**

I wish National SO was progressive enough to make this work, because I would very much like to see it. Unfortunately, the National SO board it too rooted in their ways to actually make changes to any tournaments, let alone the National tournament. I do like the idea though. It's upsetting how the only changes the Nationals Board has made in recent years is to introduce more binders and make all the events more trivia-heavy.

Long story short, I wish this would happen as well, but am not naive enough to think it's possible.

Posted: **March 24th, 2021, 11:51 am**

I would love to see it, though it's probably not going to happen. I've come to give up on some aspects of how SciOly is run.

Posted: **March 24th, 2021, 4:02 pm**

SilverBreeze wrote: ↑March 24th, 2021, 11:51 am I would love to see it, though it's probably not going to happen. I've come to give up on some aspects of how SciOly is run.

This is my thoughts exactly.

Posted: **March 26th, 2021, 9:52 am**

sciolywatson wrote: ↑March 17th, 2021, 9:03 pm As this year, most of the competitions are held online, logistically it is easy to increase the number of qualifiers if the software is able to handle the scale.

Just wanted to point out this is NOT necessarily a correct assumption. There are many factors that come into play and while the competition is online, there is still a lot of manual grading and scoring that has to happen, which doesn't scale easily.

Posted: **March 26th, 2021, 9:55 am**

chalker wrote: ↑March 26th, 2021, 9:52 am
sciolywatson wrote: ↑March 17th, 2021, 9:03 pm As this year, most of the competitions are held online, logistically it is easy to increase the number of qualifiers if the software is able to handle the scale.
Just wanted to point out this is NOT necessarily a correct assumption. There are many factors that come into play and while the competition is online, there is still a lot of manual grading and scoring that has to happen, which doesn't scale easily.

Yes, but we have seen that it is in fact possible to have a 180 teams/division tournament. National SO would just have to recruit more graders and highly encourage (require) horizontal grading.

Nobody ever said that stuff is supposed to be easy. None of us are here for easy. We're here to push the limits of what's possible and grow as a competition, as scientists, and as people. I think the opportunities that could be presented to some students via a larger nationals competition could be tremendous, though it would take more volunteer work on NSO's side.

Posted: **March 31st, 2021, 12:26 pm**

BennyTheJett wrote: ↑March 26th, 2021, 9:55 am
chalker wrote: ↑March 26th, 2021, 9:52 am
sciolywatson wrote: ↑March 17th, 2021, 9:03 pm As this year, most of the competitions are held online, logistically it is easy to increase the number of qualifiers if the software is able to handle the scale.
Just wanted to point out this is NOT necessarily a correct assumption. There are many factors that come into play and while the competition is online, there is still a lot of manual grading and scoring that has to happen, which doesn't scale easily.
Yes, but we have seen that it is in fact possible to have a 180 teams/division tournament. National SO would just have to recruit more graders and highly encourage (require) horizontal grading.

Nobody ever said that stuff is supposed to be easy. None of us are here for easy. We're here to push the limits of what's possible and grow as a competition, as scientists, and as people. I think the opportunities that could be presented to some students via a larger nationals competition could be tremendous, though it would take more volunteer work on NSO's side.

I agree with @BennyTheJet. Throughout this season, we have seen many large invitationals with more than 180+ teams (ie: BEARSO, Scilympiad Practice Competitions, Rustin, Harvard-Brown, MIT, etc), which shows us that this system is well equipped to handle this many teams. Due to this online system, the burdens of grading are greatly reduced for the event supervisor due to the fact that most of the test could be auto-graded (multiple choice/multiple select, fill in the blanks, etc) leaving only a few short answer questions which have to be manually graded. This greatly reduces the burden of grading on the Event Supervisor. We also have seen that throughout this season, there is no shortage of event supervisors and volunteer graders, due to the very large and extensive alumni network.

As @BennyTheJet was saying, this isn’t supposed to be easy. STEM is built on pushing past boundaries, a key example being the COVID-19 vaccine, which was developed under record speed.

Posted: **March 31st, 2021, 1:12 pm**

Frankly, many of the above posts are purely speculation, and much of it is factually incorrect.

sciolywatson wrote:Throughout this season, we have seen many large invitationals with more than 180+ teams (ie: BEARSO, Scilympiad Practice Competitions, Rustin, Harvard-Brown, MIT, etc), which shows us that this system is well equipped to handle this many teams.

First, just because there has been invitationals that are extremely large, does NOT mean that it is a good idea for Scilympiad to handle an insane amount of teams. Theoretically, there is nothing different than handling 10 teams, 100 teams, or even 1000 teams - adding a team is as simple as adding another row to a database. However, when there are dozens of competitions, the number of teams is multiplied, and the burden on Scilympiad's servers is multiplied as well. The amount of resources that Scilympiad has is not infinite. As has been stated numerous times by well established members of the SciOly community in the Discord, the slowness that is experienced on many of the high volume weekends (mid-late February) was a direct cause of the thousands of students competing at many tournaments happening concurrently. It is extremely naive to assume that just because something "can work", that it "will work" and that it should be a common occurrence.

sciolywatson wrote:Due to this online system, the burdens of grading are greatly reduced for the event supervisor due to the fact that most of the test could be auto-graded (multiple choice/multiple select, fill in the blanks, etc) leaving only a few short answer questions which have to be manually graded. This greatly reduces the burden of grading on the Event Supervisor. We also have seen that throughout this season, there is no shortage of event supervisors and volunteer graders, due to the very large and extensive alumni network.

Again, I cannot emphasize how incorrect this statement is. In a "normal" tournament in a "normal" year, there may be 30 teams in a division, with between 1-4 people supervising an event. In a 100-team competition this year, there are still 2-3 people per event. However, with Benny's proposal of having 180 teams (x2 = 360 teams) at the National tournament, this would significantly increase the number of volunteers needed to run the tournament.

First, you have to understand that the timeline for invitational tournaments and the National tournament is different. At BirdSO, we had about 100 people helping out, almost all of which contributed to grading. This process took almost 5-6 days, even though there were "only" 120 teams in the division C tournament and "only" 60 teams in the division B tournament. I cannot imagine how much longer this would take if the number of teams was increased to 180 teams. For the National tournament, all of this would have to be done in one day. This is simply a logistical nightmare and would require upwards of 300-500 volunteers. Contrast this to a normal-sized tournament in a normal year: if often it is hard to grade 30-60 teams in time for the awards ceremony without delays, it would be impossible to grade 180.

Second, there is simply not enough volunteers that are willing to help out for competitions and are also qualified to help out for Nationals. The amount of time that it took me and several others to vet every single volunteer for every single event for BirdSO was already monumental. Especially for the National tournament, every single volunteer must be vetted even more heavily. Even if the event supervisors may already be determined, the volunteer graders often often are not, and you risk taking in volunteers that are unfair or biased.

Third, is training. Scilympiad is a new software, and many event supervisors undoubtedly will have no idea how to add tests into Scilympiad, even if they are extremely experienced in ESing in-person tournaments. One must produce training videos, hold webinars, or write guides for the event supervisors to follow. Even with holding training sessions, many event supervisors will still inevitably not use horizontal grading, forget to finalize scoring, and have other issues that will result in incorrect rankings. For BirdSO, all of our exam writers were extremely decorated and experienced competitors, and/or extremely experienced event supervisors who had volunteered in the past; most of our graders were as well. However, this did not change the fact that we still had countless instances of people not knowing how to grade, people missing deadlines, etc (jk i love all of our volunteers \<3 With hundreds of supervisors and volunteers, this problem will only be magnified.

I haven't even begun to touch on morally whether or not I believe this should be a thing (it shouldn't), but trust me, I want this to exist as much as anyone else does. I live in a state in which the team that gets the Nationals bid is determined by pure RNG, and having the top 3 teams qualify for Nationals would be amazing for us, but this proposal is simply not possible to do at this time.

Posted: **March 31st, 2021, 1:23 pm**

builderguy135 wrote: ↑March 31st, 2021, 1:12 pm Frankly, many of the above posts are purely speculation, and much of it is factually incorrect.

sciolywatson wrote:Throughout this season, we have seen many large invitationals with more than 180+ teams (ie: BEARSO, Scilympiad Practice Competitions, Rustin, Harvard-Brown, MIT, etc), which shows us that this system is well equipped to handle this many teams.
First, just because there has been invitationals that are extremely large, does NOT mean that it is a good idea for Scilympiad to handle an insane amount of teams. Theoretically, there is nothing different than handling 10 teams, 100 teams, or even 1000 teams - adding a team is as simple as adding another row to a database. However, when there are dozens of competitions, the number of teams is multiplied, and the burden on Scilympiad's servers is multiplied as well. The amount of resources that Scilympiad has is not infinite. As has been stated numerous times by well established members of the SciOly community in the Discord, the slowness that is experienced on many of the high volume weekends (mid-late February) was a direct cause of the thousands of students competing at many tournaments happening concurrently. It is extremely naive to assume that just because something "can work", that it "will work" and that it should be a common occurrence.

sciolywatson wrote:Due to this online system, the burdens of grading are greatly reduced for the event supervisor due to the fact that most of the test could be auto-graded (multiple choice/multiple select, fill in the blanks, etc) leaving only a few short answer questions which have to be manually graded. This greatly reduces the burden of grading on the Event Supervisor. We also have seen that throughout this season, there is no shortage of event supervisors and volunteer graders, due to the very large and extensive alumni network.
Again, I cannot emphasize how incorrect this statement is. In a "normal" tournament in a "normal" year, there may be 30 teams in a division, with between 1-4 people supervising an event. In a 100-team competition this year, there are still 2-3 people per event. However, with Benny's proposal of having 180 teams (x2 = 360 teams) at the National tournament, this would significantly increase the number of volunteers needed to run the tournament.

First, you have to understand that the timeline for invitational tournaments and the National tournament is different. At BirdSO, we had about 100 people helping out, almost all of which contributed to grading. This process took almost 5-6 days, even though there were "only" 120 teams in the division C tournament and "only" 60 teams in the division B tournament. I cannot imagine how much longer this would take if the number of teams was increased to 180 teams. For the National tournament, all of this would have to be done in one day. This is simply a logistical nightmare and would require upwards of 300-500 volunteers. Contrast this to a normal-sized tournament in a normal year: if often it is hard to grade 30-60 teams in time for the awards ceremony without delays, it would be impossible to grade 180.

Second, there is simply not enough volunteers that are willing to help out for competitions and are also qualified to help out for Nationals. The amount of time that it took me and several others to vet every single volunteer for every single event for BirdSO was already monumental. Especially for the National tournament, every single volunteer must be vetted even more heavily. Even if the event supervisors may already be determined, the volunteer graders often often are not, and you risk taking in volunteers that are unfair or biased.

Third, is training. Scilympiad is a new software, and many event supervisors undoubtedly will have no idea how to add tests into Scilympiad, even if they are extremely experienced in ESing in-person tournaments. One must produce training videos, hold webinars, or write guides for the event supervisors to follow. Even with holding training sessions, many event supervisors will still inevitably not use horizontal grading, forget to finalize scoring, and have other issues that will result in incorrect rankings. For BirdSO, all of our exam writers were extremely decorated and experienced competitors, and/or extremely experienced event supervisors who had volunteered in the past; most of our graders were as well. However, this did not change the fact that we still had countless instances of people not knowing how to grade, people missing deadlines, etc (jk i love all of our volunteers \<3 With hundreds of supervisors and volunteers, this problem will only be magnified.

I haven't even begun to touch on morally whether or not I believe this should be a thing (it shouldn't), but trust me, I want this to exist as much as anyone else does. I live in a state in which the team that gets the Nationals bid is determined by pure RNG, and having the top 3 teams qualify for Nationals would be amazing for us, but this proposal is simply not possible to do at this time.

Quick question since we're speculating:

Why would everything have to be graded in a day?

I'd also like to wonder how Scilympiad would be overloaded, as it was capable of running many many tournaments on the same day for several weekends in a row in the heart of the invitationals season. I also think that volunteers can be reused by hosting the B and C tournaments on different dates, though that would probably not be popular amongst the community.

That being said, I do have to unfortunately agree on the point of volunteers. There's a lot more credentials needed to do things for the national tournament than most of the invitationals out there, and I'm not sure there's 200 people per division qualified to help grade for the national tournament.

Posted: **March 31st, 2021, 1:41 pm**

BennyTheJett wrote:Why would everything have to be graded in a day?

It technically wouldn't have to, but I guess there really isn't any precedent that can be used. Many teams already complain that the awards ceremony is delayed too much. Even if the awards ceremony was one week later, this wouldn't invalidate my point - logistically speaking, a few hundred volunteers is still impossible to manage.

BennyTheJett wrote:I'd also like to wonder how Scilympiad would be overloaded, as it was capable of running many many tournaments on the same day for several weekends in a row in the heart of the invitationals season.

Read my previous post - just because it's capable, doesn't mean it should be done. There were issues on many high-traffic weekends.

BennyTheJett wrote:I also think that volunteers can be reused by hosting the B and C tournaments on different dates, though that would probably not be popular amongst the community.

I think you said it here yourself - it would not be popular at all amongst the community. Volunteers may also not be willing to volunteer for both dates.

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